I am trying to create a DAM system for our small museum, and need some advice.

We are a small contemporary art museum. We have no collection, and a rather unique curating practice. We are a big white cube space, and five times a year we commission a contemporary artist to create a new, large-scale installation for our space. The installation exists for 4-5 weeks, we photograph and video tape it extensively, then it is torn down and usually destroyed.

This leaves us with hundreds of images with the same artist, title, date. Hundreds of digital images that are just different angles and details of the same work.

We used to have tidy archives of transparencies and slides, neatly filed away. Since we have started to supplement these with digitals, we are buried in an avalanche of images sorted in a rudimentary way. I am reading Peter's goldstandard book, and will use his workflows to add images.

For now, I need to choose software, and I'm looking for advice.

We need:

*access on our 10 machines for 7 staff members, for the forseeable future *access limited to staff terminals, or a password-protected system*images could be added by only one person, but searchable and downloadable to all *affordable software... maybe no more than $1500 start-up and $500-1000 yearly updating costs*ability to handle raw, nef, tif, jpg files. added bonus if it can handle pdfs and video *access: recent images would be frequently access for updating the web site, sending to press, for use in graphic design including text panels, brochures, and catalogues. *as this is our archive, the system needs to be easily migratable and geared towards long-term preservation*be keyword searchable*if it relies on metadata to hold info about the image, the metadata must be customizable

and most importantly,

*****the images to reside on the university's server, which is backed-up frequently

This last point + cost is the sticking point. Rice only hosts a couple of options right now. At the moment, my choices are FMPro v. 8, and Portfolio. I have also heard about dspace, which is freeware. Another idea is a web-based interface, but I am not keen on getting one built from scratch.

Can I get what I want from Portfolio or FMPro? Or is iView or some other software so superior that it is worth the extra cost to get it on the server instead? Are there any others that I am not considering?

Of course, I want ease of use and access, but since these images are our collection, I need to protect the data in the long term. Are there any issues here with the software that I'm looking at?

Kat,Given your issues, I'd explore iView as an option. You could have the administrator add images annd organize them, and have individual users use the free catalog reader, referencing the master catalog(s).

The biggest problem with using Portfolio is that you can't annotate the RAW images, so the upgrade path is kind of blocked.I'm sure others here can shed light on this.

Shayne Bowman at iView could possibly give you a hand figuring this out.Peter

Hello...first post... please be patient!I have similar needs to "katkuster" - except am working on PC - is iView Mac only? Is there a Windows program available with similar capabilities?Thank you!!-Kati